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History

1757

first requests for coal exploitation concessions.

1759

start of production.

1862

start of the coking of coal.

1906

decline because of technical difficulties and reduced profitability.

1946

after World War II the the collieries were nationalised.

1958

collieries and power plant closed.

26-SEP-1976

Marcel Maulini coal mine museum inaugurated.

1991

bought by the municipality.

1992

integration into the Franche Comté techniques and cultures museum network.

Geology

The coal at Ronchamps was formed during the Carbon age, some 300Ma ago.
The situation was suitable for the sedimentation of coal, which is actually at
first a thick layer of peat, formed in a vast swamp during an era of continual
downlift.
Here at Ronchamps was a lake basin, the peat was sealed by an airtight layer of
silt after 20Ma of sedimentation.
The pressure and temperature caused by the overlying layers of rock, started the
process of coal formation.
The amount of hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen was continually reduced which caused
an increasing level of carbon.

Description

The mining museum named after Marcel Maulini is located
at Ronchamps.
This city is well known, but actually not for the mining museum but for the
modern church on a hill above the town, which was created by Le Corbussier.
And actually the museum is not named after a miner, but a medical doctor.
When the last mine and the power plant it fed were closed in 1958, Marcel Maulini, a local physician who had many miners as
patients, had the idea that the remains of 200 years of coal mining should be
preserved in a museum.
He was the doctor of the collieries since 1946, his father was a stone cutter
who died of silicosis.
During his work he led numerous studies on this typical miners disease and its
treatments.

The mining started in 1759, after the first requests for coal exploitation
concessions had already been made in 1757.
In this early days the production was very low, the coal was mined by hand and
it was very hard.
During the French Revolution the mines became state property.
But soon they were sold again and over the time were owned by various companies.
The first mineshaft was built in 1810, the heyday of the coal mining.
At the end of the 19th century 1,500 people worked in the mines and produced
some 200,000 tons of coal per year.

Around 1906 the production became smaller again, because of the more difficult
mining conditions.
The geology was one problem, the coal measures became thinner, more shattered,
and the quality of the coal decreased.
On the other side there were collieries in the northern Alsace and Massif
Central area, who became a strong competition.
Actually the crisis of the mines was continual and incresing, and basically it
was continuous decline in profitability.
Finally the mines were closed.

The museum shows many aspects of mining and the daily life of the miners.
It is located in a buiding with three storeys.
The ground floor shows a large collection of tools, artefacts, and original
photographs.
Most of the exhibits were donated by miners.
The first floor is dedicated to the large Polish community in Ronchamp, but also
the daily life of the miners.
The second floor contains the archives of some of the collieries.
It is also used for temporary exhibitions.